Chris Christie shouldn’t bank on NJ Supreme Court on pension funding

TRENTON – Gov. Chris Christie asked the New Jersey Supreme Court to assume jurisdiction in the state employee pension funding debacle, hoping it would say the state doesn’t have to make payments Christie says it can’t afford. That could backfire and ignite economic disaster for a state already limping along financially.

A Superior Court ruled in February that Christie must work with the Legislature to find $1.6 billion to put into the pension fund by June 30, as promised. It was part of a reform deal in which employees accepted some changes and the state agreed to increase its pension payment annually until its full contribution share in the seventh year. The governor reversed himself, saying tax receipts were too low to do it.

After the Superior Court told him to find a way, the administration, maintaining there is no time for an appeals court to rule, asked permission to dump it in the lap of the state’s highest court.

“The trial court’s decision has thus caused an avalanche of litigation and, without immediate review, will potentially grind the budget process to a halt as the elected branches await the trial court’s imprimatur of their fiscal and policy decisions,” Assistant Attorney General Jean Reilly wrote in the Supreme Court filing. That’s legal talk for the light at the end of the tunnel is a train heading our way.

Christie is banking on the high court ruling that if there isn’t any money, the payments can be further delayed. But our state Supreme Court has never been known for common sense.

That’s why about 60 percent of the state education budget goes to just 32 of the state’s 600 school districts, meaning you pay for those 32 and your local district if you don’t live in one of the 32. It’s called the Abbott decision and the series of cases that make it up go back for decades.

It started because poor districts couldn’t finance their schools as well as richer districts. The big thinkers, who had rather throw money at a problem than put in the hard work needed to find solutions, signed off on equalizing funding and called it a day. They refuse to admit they made a mistake way back then even though history shows the districts, some of which are no longer poor, haven’t shown appreciable progress for the billions invested. Your property taxes have climbed steadily though.

What if the court orders the money put into the pension plan? The state has one source of revenue, that’s taxes. It already has a national reputation as an expensive place you don’t want to live, work or die in. More taxes will keep business out of New Jersey and will speed up the exit to the border for those who can leave. Or the state could cut programs people need and depend on.

Christie doesn’t have a good track record with the courts.

An appellate court ruled Thursday that Christie, in an effort to balance his budget, tried to illegally seize more than $160 million in 2012 in fees municipalities collected from developers – affordable housing trust funds. State law requires the money to be used to subsidize construction of affordable housing.

It was the second ruling against Christie involving affordable housing. The state Supreme Court ruled last month that the Council on Affordable Housing is no longer in charge of setting the number of homes each town must make available. The high court was ticked off that the council, which is charged with overseeing the state’s affordable housing system, missed years of deadlines to set new quotas.

The court ruled it is now up to judges to determine the quotas, on a case-by-case basis.

Christie tried to abolish the council in 2010. He said the state should get “the hell out of the business of telling people how many units they’re supposed to have.”

He has a point there. Neither should the Supreme Court be holding on to a decades old pipe dream that if you keep throwing tax money at a problem it will go away while in the real world generations of children don’t get an education. But that’s the outfit Christie is counting on.

Bob Ingle is senior political columnist for Gannett New Jersey. He can be reached via e-mail at bingle@gannettnj.com or @bobingle99 on Twitter.